Needs-based and fair holiday planning for large organisations
13.04.2026
Fair and transparent holiday planning is essential in large organisations, both for maintaining high employee satisfaction and for ensuring operational efficiency. The ZESAM workforce management solution provides a fully digital process, from submitting holiday requests through to making well-founded decisions.
The following is a summary of the presentation “Needs-based and fair holiday planning for large organisations” by Sandra Comendeiro, Product Manager ZESAM and UX expert at Ergon, delivered at HR Festival 2026 in Zurich.
In many companies, holidays are not a purely factual matter – emotions also play a role in holiday planning. As soon as several employees want to take time off in the same week, it is no longer just a question of planning. It is also about fairness, expectations and often the feeling: “Why was my request rejected while someone else’s was approved?”
The most difficult part of holiday planning is not submitting the request. The most difficult part is making a fair decision. In small teams, holiday planning can often be resolved through discussion. In large organisations, this is no longer feasible. Blackout periods, part-time working arrangements and differing entitlements all have to be considered at the same time – while business operations still need to continue.
This is where the ZESAM workforce management solution comes in. It makes decisions easier to understand by creating transparency, making the team context visible and providing a shared data basis. In this way, an emotional issue becomes a structured and fair process.
From holiday request to fair decision
Employees first enter their preferences and requests directly in the employee portal via the mobile app.
Important information is already visible when a holiday request is entered: free and available days, as well as planning-relevant information such as blackout periods or school holidays and holidays that have already been approved or are still pending. This allows employees to see from the outset that it is not only about their own request, but also about the wider planning context. If a particular week is especially popular, they can enter an alternative. This further simplifies the subsequent decision, as the choice is no longer limited to approval or rejection, but can also take a first and second preference into account.
The actual decision is then made in ZESAM’s holiday and absence planning module. Managers do not make decisions based on instinct, but on the relevant context.
The monthly and annual views show each individual request within the wider planning timeline. Blackout periods, public holidays and other events such as school holidays are visible at a glance. The employee information also indicates who has school-age children.
Especially in large organisations, it is essential that information can be filtered in a targeted manner, for example by role, contract or employee. Holiday mode brings the data relevant to planning into focus and hides everything else. An overview of holiday balances shows entitlements, holidays already approved, and any outstanding or excess days. This gives managers a clear basis for making fair and transparent holiday-planning decisions.
What matters most is not the click on “Approve”, but the quality of the information on which the decision is based. ZESAM makes rules, team context, entitlements and alternatives visible, creating the foundation for holiday planning that is fairer, more transparent and more efficient.